Poll: Do you want smaller updates released more frequently, medium sized updates released monthly, or big updates released annually (or bi-annually)?

[delete12345]

What type of updates do you prefer to receive for an ongoing, actively developed game? I had to re-write the thread title a few times so you can easily correlate to this question, and intuitively think of your preference.

This is a poll about quantifying the frequency of updates and the estimated duration between each patch updates to an ongoing, actively developed game, regardless of what platforms this game is released on.

This poll is inspired by the negative reviews of any given game on Steam, particularly the Steam reviews which contains complaints about the update schedules. I have intentionally cropped out the posting date, what game the review is from, and the author's details, and picked out a small handful of negative reviews about the update times from the various games within my Steam library:

To summarize, some gamers are either not patient enough to wait for an update after a long period of time, or they are fed up with the update schedules, so they wrote about the updates as negative reviews.

So, I created this poll, so that we can try to understand what's your preferred update size and the frequency of the updates, that sweet Goldilocks spot you would prefer.

What this poll only focuses on:

• How long of a duration between any releases (hotfixes, patches, balancing, feature updates, content updates, DLCs, etc.) that you would prefer to wait for.
• The size amount of changes per release you find is in the sweet spot you liked.
• Your tolerances of waiting on any releases (listed above) to be out (which depends on your opinions, your preferences, and how favorable the devs are).

What this poll omits from the quantization process:

• Manpower (how many developers, contractors, and teams working on this game)
• Number of players (single-player, multi-player, co-op)
• Management (the efficiency of management, executives, directors, producers, and managerial positions within all groups / departments / branches)
• Financial incentives (whether to cater to shareholders, venture capitals, crowdsourcing and backers, etc. by implementing features built for sustaining development)
• Monetization (whether in-app purchases can increase profits from player bases)
• Corporate changes (mergers, acquisitions, layoffs, low morale, high turnovers, bankruptcy, shutdowns, bureaucratic policies, etc.)
• Targeted platform
• Game file size (however large or small the game is, it has no relevancy to the update schedules the developers choose to do).
• Good game or bad game

I understand that these are tightly-knitted factors in deciding your preferred update schedule, and that these factors are totally different among games you played or have heard about from others, across many different players. But this is about you, your preferences, and what you feel is right for a game in your mind at the exact moment you read this sentence. Your preferences can also have a wide range of tolerances to update schedules, so that is why this poll allows multiple selections.

And please add comments for anything. Thanks in advance.


TL;DR - Multiple selections! What type of updates do you prefer to receive for an ongoing, actively developed game?

 

[Soulflarz]

Completely depends on the game, impossible to answer. MMO expansions and stuff are a completely different ballpark from fortnite reworking the entire game or valorant just adding a map/agent - really depends.

 

[Rosebud]

I like the Fortnite model of small updates every two weeks and a huge one every year

 

[delete12345]

Completely depends on the game, impossible to answer. MMO expansions and stuff are a completely different ballpark from fortnite reworking the entire game or valorant just adding a map/agent - really depends.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, that's why I gave the ability to poll for multiple choices, because you might have games, A, B, and C, and they all have various degrees of update frequencies that aren't one or the other. And the A, B, and C game update schedules are schedules which you find are tolerable.

 

[HockeyBird]

A good point of comparison is Destiny 2. It has frequent updates, seasons every 3 months, and annual expansions (although recent ones have been delayed from that cadence). While new seasons can be fun, they just don't compare to whole new expansions in my opinion.

I prefer to have one big drop with a lot of content to sink my teeth into for a few weeks and then set it aside for a while instead of being drip fed content. It allows me to get a satisfying experience while also giving me a break some the game, allowing me to avoid burn out.

 

[limi]

I don't really care I don't usually come back to games after I beat them, even to check out the update, and by the time I do usually I forget what was different. I stopped playing games like Destiny because while every game is a waste of time after a while it started becoming very apparent with it.

 

[Ricker]

Small updates frequently for Qol while working on the medium stuff I guess,like bad frame rate and the like...

 

[zombiejames]

Small and more frequent. Features should be polished and might need more time but bugs and fixes should be made available ASAP.

 

[GJ]

Yeah, it completely depends on the game. I'm mostly a single player gamer, so for those games I don't mind big DLC expansions, but I don't need small updates that add funny t-shirts or whatever. In the case of something like Balatro, I wouldn't really care for small updates that would add a joker or two, but I would be all over a paid expansion that'd add 40-50 new jokers.

But in a game like Splatoon I love how they keep adding free maps (they're technically included with the price of admission, of course) every couple months so the community always gets the same new stuff and people keep logging in every now and then to check out the new maps. I also loved the extra Mario Kart 8 DX maps, although they were spread way too thin (6 drops over 2 years iirc). I also loved how Animal Crossing: New Horizons had (almost) monthly updates in the first year, which added a lot of content. People will claim "it should've been there in the first place", but it was all stuff tied to the current date (summer waves, a Halloween update, things like that) so it was nice to me that stuff wasn't datamined to hell and back in the first week or spoiled by people who time travelled in the game. It kept it fresh and it kept me and my friends coming back almost daily to check out the new stuff and collect new things. It was a bummer that the second year had less frequent updates and didn't add nearly as much, which pretty much killed the longevity of that game for a lot of people. Most people I played with maxed out their museum and built their dream town in the first year/18 months, so the only reason to come back to the game after that was to earn more money from the stalk market for nothing, or for the DLC that only kept most of us really busy for a week or two. I feel like, despite selling like crazy, that game really would've benefitted from more frequent updates or big paid content packs. They could've added so much stuff to it; furniture sets, new stuff to collect for the museum, new villagers, minigames to play with friends, events on the island… On the one hand I'm glad they didn't go all Sims 4 on it and dropped a million micro transactions, but on the other hand it's crazy to me they completely dropped the game after a while. I 100% would buy big yearly expansions for €30 or something. Introduce a second island with a more tropical theme/biome where I can collect all kinds of new exotic fruits, add new animal species and fish/insects who fit that climate, themed furniture, more locations to visit and do stuff at… It basically writes itself.

Outside of the evergreen stuff, which is mostly Nintendo for me (Mario Kart, Mario Party), competitive multiplayer games often lose my interest after a week or two, which is why I bounced off Helldivers II for example, despite really loving the game. The rotation of the planets caused two of my favorite planets to play on to disappear, and they didn't really add any worthwhile stuff to it while I was playing (roughly the first month after launch), so at a certain point it felt like I got from the game what it had to offer. When they finally started to add new stuff (which was obviously delayed because of server issues), I moved on to other games. I keep wanting to go back, but the people I played it with also haven't played it in weeks for mostly the same reason, so it kinda feels like too little, too late for me in that instance. I'm sure we'll be back after a large content drop, though. But had they launched new game mechanics or weapons or enemy types or whatever after a week or two, and did a similar thing two weeks later, etc, I'm sure we would've stuck around longer. The game not having any kind of roadmap, not even a super vague one, also hurt it for me personally.

Things like bug-/hotfixes, balance tweaks, etc. should always be deployed asap and not tied to content drops or whatever.

 

[Ckoerner]

I play mostly single player games. I want the complete package the first time I play through. Life is too short and there are too many games to play to go back for extras after I'm done.

 

[BassForever]

If I'm coming back to a game I've already beaten or put significant time into, I want it to be for a substantial update. When a games gets a tons of smaller updates every week or so, I just get frustrated and wait until they're "done updating the game" to play/continue playing the game. I also mostly play offline, singleplayer games so my view of this is rather skewed.

 

[DontHateTheBacon]

Huge updates annually, or even further apart than annually. Gives me time to miss the game and play other games! Then I get to come back to something I really liked and it's like a new experience again.

 

[DeSolos]

I don't play multiplayer/GAAS games, so I don't see a ton of updates. If the game I'm playing needs updates then I just get them when they're ready.

Updates, like all of game dev, can take a long time. I prefer to receive it when it's ready.

 

[headspawn]

i like the 'when it's ready' approach but if they do frequent stuff I'm not complaining.

 

[defaltoption]

I'm a fan of monthly/bi-annual updates if I had the choice, applies to everything not just gaming.

 

[Twister]

I personally like having medium-large amounts of content dropped in larger packages at a somewhat regular but longer interval.
I used to really enjoy Call of Duty doing the 4 Map Packs for each game rather than just dropping one map per month or two like they do now. It felt like way more of an event and gave you a ton more to discover at once

 

[MrRibeye]

Those who voted for large and huge updates, Greg Street would agree with you that those bring back players, and small updates don't.

But are there examples of a game studio that doesn't split devs into Team A who work on a huge update for 9 months, and Team B who work on small bi-weekly updates?

In other words, is there an example of a game studio that exclusively put out small updates and not spending any of their resources on future projects, future expansions?

If that were the case, wouldn't those small updates be a total banger, since their quality isn't compromised by lack of resources?

 

[Mobius and Pet Octopus]

My answer for GAAS and an early access title would be different. I think GAAS does well with a larger update every 2-3 months with small updates in between. And for early access I don't have a strong preference but would rather see more coherent patches than not, so likely large patches every 5-6 months.

 

[Not Spaceghost]

I hate this question because in truth I know that regardless of what we want for GAAS titles the publishers just want constant updates flowing to keep engagement high and keep players from going to play other titles in the same space.

 

[Sabin]

World of Warcraft content updates for the current expansion were pretty great. Good mixture between major, medium and smaller sized patches. Pretty much the perfect way to keep your game alive but requires an insane amount of staff which only a handful a studios can do.

 

[GamerJM]

Bi-monthly is nice I think? 2-3 times a year feels like too few. Every week or two would be too much to keep up with. Anything in between those I'm good with.

 

[dose]

I play mostly single player games. I want the complete package the first time I play through. Life is too short and there are too many games to play to go back for extras after I'm done.

Click to shrink...

Exactly this for me too.

 

[CommodoreKong]

I'll always look fondly back on how Valve gave us a couple of big updates for TF2 every year (usually summer, Halloween and winter). Of course a big part of it was how they built up the updates over several days by revealing bits of the update each say on the TT2 blog along with the occasional piece of media like a comic or video.

 

[Kuro]

If that were the case, wouldn't those small updates be a total banger, since their quality isn't compromised by lack of resources?

Click to shrink...

no because time is probably the most important resource.

 

[Torpedo Vegas]

However, I don't care. I have multiple games going at anyone time. There's so many games out I don't play anything like it's a job where I need constant updates.

 

[Yuntu]

Every 6 weeks like Genshin is fantastic pacing (and incredibly hard to do at that scale).

 

[iksenpets]

Something in the 3-6 month range probably, but I'm explicitly looking for a long enough gap that I have time to bounce off and do other things

 

[Gr8one]

Depends on the game. For quick pick up and play stuff I like a quicker cycle, monthy or maybe bi-monthly, for games the require more exploration or time like mmo I prefer big content updates or expansions bi annually or annualy

 

[JimLink]

I don't want any updates. I want all the content from the start, when you buy the game like the old days.

 

[tandeciarz]

I'd actually want games to just ship finished and that's it. I mean critical bugs, ok can happen, but I don't want studios to be constantly updating games…

 

[Gr8one]

I don't want any updates. I want all the content from the start, when you buy the game like the old days.

Click to shrink...

This is what I would prefer but OP asked for actively developed game I assumed GaaS. If we are talking early access games then this is my choice too. Especially AAA early access. GTFO with your incomplete games at launch.

 

[JCH!]

Small and frequent updates have a higher likelihood of keeping me engaged. I don't really go back to games once I drop them so if you lose me because your game got stale while waiting for this massive update then I'm gone.

 

[Yam's]

Depends on the kind of updates we're speaking about. When the game is missing core features and releases without them (as some games do after getting out of early access), then I expect those features to come out quickly. Same goes for performance updates, it always feels bad to be among the day 1 buyers only to have a unoptimized build.

If we're speaking about content updates, then I'd rather have on big update that adds a lot of new stuff. There isn't a single game I'm playing all year, and I'm not gonna relearn/reinstall a game just for 1-2h of content. However if I enjoy the game and it adds a lot of new stuff, I'm always happy to go back to it.

Too many updates can also be a pain when you return to a game. Having to read 10 patch notes to check what changed, what was added, etc. isn't fun.

 

[Greywaren]

It strongly depends on the kind of update. New content is fine to release in big, separated updates. I want bug fixes ASAP.

 

[Tsuyu]

I like Genshin model.

Every 6 weeks you get a new patch with new events and 2/3 of the time you get a whole new locale to explore. Sometimes they even compose music just for an one off experience.

I do not see anyone hitting this standard easily.

 

[Azaan60]

I play mostly single player games. I want the complete package the first time I play through. Life is too short and there are too many games to play to go back for extras after I'm done.

Click to shrink...

This, I generally wait for dlc and patches to be released before I start a game.

 

[Lizard Wizard]

I'd just want Patch Notes. Tell me Forza Horizon 5…why do you get a 12GB patch every month?

 

[Dan Thunder]

A small update of some sort every month or so with a big one once or twice a year will generally keep my interest but honestly I'll just take whatever means that the devs aren't continue to run themselves into the ground post-release.

 

[Kazer]

I don't play live service/gaas/multiplayer games and I very rarely return to games for DLC.

So - mainly just wait for patches to fix any major bugs at launch, which would hopefully be small and frequent updates.

 

[Kenai]

I like the cadence of XIV a lot because most of the patches are pretty substantial. Expansions are of course huge but new raids/trials/dungeons/story chapters/tribe quests/relic quests etc all give me a lot to do, and they periodically add to older stuff also.

There are regular smaller events from gacha type games that interest me too from time to time but a lot of it just ends of being node grinding with a story (sometimes) attached. So I'm fine with those not being constant.

DLC for non live service stuff I am fine with waiting a year or two.

 

[Cathode Ray]

Huge updates annually, I prefer to let each version of a game breathe and be its own era.

 

[Shemhazai]

Bit of everything. Helldivers 2 does it well, having small content updates out of no where, then the planned stuff every month. Same for most Hoyoverse games, which add something small but interesting every few weeks, then does big drops for major content expansions.

 

[whoamiifnotwhoiam]

Medium updates with bigger pack of features and then maybe smaller fixes and/or hotfixes to correct bugs and other things of the sort. I don't mind waiting more time for features and other things like events to be polished and added, but if there is some annoying glitch in the game i think it's more optimal to try and correct it before introducing new features.

 

[HellofaMouse]

im not gonna keep revisiting a game every month or even every other month. bigger updates, less frequently.

 

[.exe]

In the context of Early Access games, I don't really have a strong preference for update pace as long as development progress or breaks as well as roadmaps are communicated on a regular basis.

Ideally, the developer does not disappear for ~a year without updates, then announces a new update and even a multi-platform publishing deal out of the blue, when fans have had to deal with a semi-broken game wondering if they burned their money believing in a project.

With the game I'm thinking of, I was soured enough that I barely touched it since 1.0. It didn't help its case that it still released in an unpolished state.

 

[Kazooie]

I want no updates except for bug fixes please. If you want to create more content, make a sequel.

 

[WildArms]

Depends on the game. Blue Protocol I'd want large updates whereas FFXIV I'd be happy with mid size updates.

 

[delete12345]

But are there examples of a game studio that doesn't split devs into Team A who work on a huge update for 9 months, and Team B who work on small bi-weekly updates?

Click to shrink...

One I might think fits the bill here is NDCube for the Mario Party series. Outside of hotfixes and small updates, I think they are a one-and-done kind of game studio.

 

[LumberPanda]

I've never been so deep into a GaaS that I felt offended that they weren't working harder to give me stuff faster.

If it's not a competitive game then I can shelve it until they release a major update, and if it is a competitive game then just having others to play against is enough. I'm not upset Nintendo hasn't made an update to Melee.

 

[PJTierney]

I'd just want Patch Notes. Tell me Forza Horizon 5…why do you get a 12GB patch every month?

Click to shrink...

They drop notes on the Support page: https://support.forzamotorsport.net/hc/en-us/sections/4408834302355-Release-Notes-and-Known-Issues

I like the 4 week cadence of the Forza games, it feels like the right balance between frequency and scope.